


April 27th / I was only a child

by girlgamer



Category: Batman (Comics), Detective Comics (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jason Todd deserves better, Light Angst, Underage Drinking, i tagged robin as a character because jason will always be a robin deep down, the major character death is always jason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 06:25:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16511039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlgamer/pseuds/girlgamer
Summary: Jason visits his grave.





	April 27th / I was only a child

August 16, 1997 - June 5, 2013

It wasn't his real death date. On the grave.

It was a weird thing to be surprised by after coming all the way out here.

Made sense of course, Bruce couldn't have it..

Couldn't have _Robin'_ s death matching up so closely with Jason Peter Todd Wayne's could he?  
Only logical really, how like Bruce not to slip up on the secret identity management even while paying for his own kid's gravestone. 

Jason doesn't know how he feels about it, another wrong added to the overall wrongness of the grave, of being here of all places on the day Robin went down in Ethiopia.

It shouldn't feel as much like coming home as it does. As close to home as he'll ever get again.

He knows he's being dramatic. Not to mention maudlin. It's stupid and bitter and silly. But what can he say, he's grieving. 

It's what he came here for.

To grieve for the life he lost, the one that wasn't worth enough in the end.

To mourn for the parts of himself that stayed buried, the innocence, the hope, he feels like he should be allowed that, it's just for him, no one else has to know.  
He doesn't think anyone else will bother to grieve today anymore now that's he's been back for so long, so he might as well, right?

He just didn't expect to feel so conflicted before the first hour of mourning for the boy wonder who broke was over.

The grave is wrong.

It should never have been, the kid in the tights who believed in superheroes and hope and gotham and batman and the magic of being robin, should never have died. 

Especially not to be reforged into a man with a gun, which at the end of the day is what he is, what he has to be. Jason doesn't lie to himself, he knows he's not the kind of person the boy who died trying to save a criminal would've wanted to turn into.

But Batman's been fighting crime in Gotham city for over a decade, and the rogues still manage to kill innocent people every year.  
Someone has to do something about it, even if it's horrible, even if it feels like lying to themselves when they say it's for the best, even if they have to destroy themselves for it. 

There are 3 million children living in Gotham and...

And the grave's wrong.

It says here lies Jason Todd and that's a lie. It says June 5th and that's a lie too. It doesn't say beloved son. (he's not sure whether that would've been the worst lie imaginable or whether it could've been true at some point, he doesn't know, either way it's not there.) It doesn't say anything else except his name and the fucking altered date scratched into the cold marble.

It hurts him. In an odd unexpected kind of way. Jason Todd's death date is different to Robin's. It's like a final denial, a final rejection.

Jason hadn't had much of a chance to take a look at the thing and notice the discrepancy last time he was here, his only real memories of this place blur into jarred fragments of panic and fear:

A judgemental stone face looking down on him; the dark, the pitch black darkness and the stuffy dry taste of the air right before he realised where he was and stopped breathing properly all together. 

The sound of padded satin tearing, choking and swallowing on the dirt in his mouth, the pain from his broken nails and fingers, the feel of the wood splinters in his hands, the fear leftover from losing his clutch on the broken belt buckle somewhere down below, the raw sting in his throat from all the screaming for Bruce while he was in.. in there, the earthy taste of the mud, the rain splashing down unrelentingly onto his face. 

Like nature had decided to try drowning him since the suffocation hadn't worked.

Since the starvation and the homelessness and the betrayal and the torture and the explosion and the burning and the asphyxiation and the coffin hadn't worked. 

His memory of the night comes back in bits and pieces. Flashes and sensations pieced together from nightmares and unforgettable terror. Relief. Fear. Longing.

Wanting Bruce to put him back together and make it okay, him not being there. Crawling off to try and get back home to him. One last mission Robin. 

Jason blinks and stares down at the undisturbed green grass covering his plot. 

He knows now that it wouldn't have made a difference even if he hadn't been hit by that car or brought to that hospital or immediately kidnapped a few days later by Talia's men.

Even if he had somehow made it home to ~~his dad~~ Batman ~~~~and Alfred on that night in the rain. Unbeknownst to him, Bruce already had a new Robin, a new son whom he trusted more than he ever had or would the boy with the tire iron.

That thought makes him turn away from the grave. Which is stupid. - Maybe coming here today was stupid to begin with - He can't look away from what's already happened even if there weren't a goddamn statue of an angel leering down over him in testament to it. He can't look away from himself.

Even if he could there'd be no point to it. 

Dick and the others have spent years pretending to themselves that this wasn't what it was. That the fifteen year old in the ground got what he deserved and it was his own fault he wasn't accepted back after returning, he supposes they might have taken field trips out here before he came back and ruined the fantasy.

Made themselves feel good and spiritual about visiting the dead wonder, used it as a reminder to themselves and the younger ones how real the game is.

What a perfect flawed martyr of a cautionary tale he must've made. Whoops, his bad.

Thinking about the others visiting his grave makes his insides twist, it makes him feel cynical and self centred.

But this is the only day he'll forgive himself these kinds of feelings and he'll be damned  _again_ if he'll let himself feel guilty or awkward over being sad. It's turning into self policing really, him feeling shitty about something and then berating himself for the self pity. It's not a good way to be and it makes him feel even worse.

Nope, Jason wants to be here today. 

He needs to be.

The day is bright, the shadows the tombstones and the angel casts over him are long, and the elegant trees a short distance away are flowering.

Jason takes out the small case of beer from the rucksack over his shoulder. He puts one of the bottles down on the ground next to the stone, for the kid he used to be, it obscures the  _Here lies_ bit and he thinks that's fitting, all things considered. The beer will go unopened for the rest of the day and the night too. He won't touch it.

The rest are his though.

He hunkers down on the ground with his back pressed against the lettering and his head tilted up to look at that sculpted Angel overhead and pops the lid of the first one open.

Raises his beer to the sunlit sky in a toast to all things red, yellow and green, before taking the first bitter sip to kick off his vigil.

It's a bright day to be dark in and he's glad for it, knowing Gotham it'll fog over again before long, but for now, he's glad.

He takes another sip.

Jason doesn't like getting drunk. Hates it actually, doesn't see the point in making himself feel sick, when he could accomplish pretty much the same end result by pushing a finger or two down his throat. Or by thinking about what Dick said to him in front of Damian and Tim last night.

He usually only nurses one or two over the course of an evening when he does go drinking, enjoys the taste not the lightheadedness or the associated hangover.  
That dropped off almost altogether when he was with Roy and Kori, he'd get a carbonated drink or water like Roy most of the time back then, neither of them ever mentioned it but he'd catch Roy smiling in relief.

It's picked up again since he started hanging out with Artemis, drinking with her's the best way to get her to relax and open up after all, next to sparring that is.

So no, Jason's not big on getting shit-faced, he doubts he ever will be considering Willis and all the drunks and alcoholics who lived on Crime Alley. But he'll drink today.

It's the principle of the thing.

He sort of wants to force himself to feel angry again, wants to let it fill him up, make him feel right and good and fierce and strong instead of empty and alone with his back pressed against the letters proclaiming his life's end.

Have the rage sharpen all the hurts into a weapon that cuts the others instead of just him, but that's never really worked out in the past. 

The angrier he gets about it all the more the others in the family feel like they're right about him, the more they distrust him, the more they abandon him for each other.  
He feels like if him getting angry is such a deal breaker for the family it's probably not worth even trying it anymore. He tells himself he's used to it. It doesn't stop the resigned sting of resentment but then, he's used to that too. 

He wonders suddenly what Bruce had put on the gravestones of the others, he wonders where Steph's is, did Bruce shell out for it? Or did her family have any money set aside for that sort of thing? He doubts it somehow. He wonders if it was Bruce or her mom who picked out whatever the inscription says.

Maybe he should go check it out, pay his respects, he wonders if she'd mind. It feels invasive and personal, but then, it's not like the whole family hasn't toured his at one point or another. Fair's fair and shitty does as shitty is.

He didn't really stick around at Dickie's fake funeral long enough to see the stone itself, he wonders if it's still there or if one of them had it tactfully removed after the mass memory wipe.

He wonders what Damian's would have said if Bruce had ever made the public aware of the fact that he'd died or seen to some real funeral arrangements, he at least had a stone marking it, but it was blank and the grave was eternally empty what with the kid being corpse-napped by Ra's. At least _his_ grave started out with a body inside it.

Tim's another robin Bruce didn't handle the death of without a heavy dose of withdrawal from humanity, maybe just as well seeing as it turned out Tim was just AWOL and his kidnapper had faked everyone out.

So yeah Jason really doesn't have much in the way of comparison to go by... he's pretty sure Damian's at least, would've had beloved son on it if Bruce had let him stay dead. Dick's probably did too. And a bunch of other beloveds, like brother and friend. He doesn't want to think about that right now.

Jason takes another sip of golden liquor and shuts his eyes.

He thinks about playing baseball and writing down what he thought of The Scarlet Pimpernel for a book report.

He thinks of jumping free fall off a building with a laugh and knowing unquestionably that Batman would catch him.

He thinks about Catherine and Bruce back before her eyes got that permanently glassy sheen to them and before Bruce stopped smiling at him whenever he saw him and stopped calling him chum or Jay-lad or son. 

He thinks about promising himself that one day when he grew up he'd be nicer to the new robin than Dick ever was to him.

He thinks about that confidence he used to have, that joy, that fierce hope and belief that they could make things better for Gotham city. He thinks about Alfred acting out Shakespeare for him to help him fall asleep. He thinks about how big Gotham used to feel, like a whole self contained world. He thinks about wishing Nightwing would visit the manor more like he'd said he would. About wishing the Titans would invite him over for another mission again. About Wonder Woman mistaking him for Dick but him being too awed by her to mind. About Jim Gordon telling Bruce Wayne he had a great little kid there and making jokes with him while he hid from the rest of the party. About Bruce teaching him how to play baseball for the first time. About how happy he was when he managed his first lap across the pool.

He misses himself.

 


End file.
